


Waiting and Wishing

by surexit



Category: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 13:55:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/pseuds/surexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rat has been kissing everybody except Marco.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting and Wishing

Beyond the Jiardasian ambassador’s finely-tailored shoulder, Marco could see the Rat talking to a woman. She looked foreign, much taller than the Rat, with dark hair and a broad, elegant face. She was clearly charmed, and was laughing softly into her drink as the Rat, leaning on one of his crutches in order to free his other hand to twirl in the air, told her a story that was no doubt scandalous and probably injurious to Marco’s reputation. Marco lingered over the woman’s face, taking a second or two to place her ( _Annika Sverbriska_ , his mind supplied, _twenty-two, daughter of the Duke of Verligz_ ).

The ambassador cleared his throat, and Marco’s eyes flew back to his face. “My apologies,” he said. “Please do go on.” He could see the man deciding whether to take offence or not, and plastered on his most dazzling smile. It did the trick, unfortunately. The man trundled back into action, continuing to expound his opinions on the tobacco available in Samavia at great length. It was not complimentary. Marco’s smile did not stiffen into a rictus, his muscles too well-trained, but his mind did wander back to the Rat, wondering what he was saying to the woman, what she was saying back. Wondering at what point the Rat would swing himself a little closer to her, look up at her with a charming, off-kilter smile, and invite her to accompany him into the garden. He’d seen it happen before. Once there, they would walk, and they would glance at each other and smile, and they would talk of small and friendly things, and finally they would find a place where they could stand in seclusion, one not necessarily secure but safe enough for the moment. The Rat, Marco imagined, would deal with the height issue without fuss. Maybe he would say, “You’ll have to bend down, I’m afraid,” in a matter of fact way, or maybe he would say, “It’s inconvenient but I assure you it’s worth it,” with a dashing smile. Marco had thought on it, but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. It was a certainty, however, that their lips would meet, and a certainty that both would enjoy it, and a certainty that Marco would see the Rat later in the evening, thin lips reddened and pomaded hair slightly out of place. The lady would have a small smug smile on her face, and every so often their glances would catch and then slide off each other, while Marco watched in agony.

“Still, mustn’t grumble, eh, your Highness?” the ambassador said.

“Of course,” Marco said, and checked his pocket watch. The ambassador had been speaking for ten minutes. His eyes flicked around the room. The Rat and the woman had gone. Marco set his jaw. “Would you excuse me?”

It wasn’t difficult to follow the trail. Marco knew these gardens like the back of his hand, after all, and there were only a few places that would really be suitable for the Rat to take the shine off the purity of a Duke’s daughter. He rapidly ran through and discarded options in his head, and settled on the corner beyond the entrance to the maze, where no one ever went and which was close to a beautiful rose walk that seemed like it might appeal to lovers. 

He found them before he was ready to, and when he did he came back to himself with a jolt that left him breathing uneasily, hearing the wet sounds of kissing and wondering to himself what in God’s name he thought he was doing. He made to back away, remove himself from the situation, but his boot heel landed on a patch of dry leaves and made what sounded to Marco’s agonised ears like the noise of the report of a hundred enemy guns. The sounds of kissing abruptly ceased, and Marco heard an agitated young man’s voice saying in accented Samavian, “Did you hear that?” 

“Yes,” the Rat said, in the same language. “You go out, I’ll wait five minutes and come out behind you. Don’t worry.”

Marco numbly waited for the woman to speak. He couldn’t fit the young man into the picture in his mind, but clearly he was there. Perhaps he had been watching. Perhaps he was the young woman’s chaperone. His mind groped for and discarded the theories, but as the silence lingered in the moments after the young man’s steps died away, and no young woman spoke, one idea pushed itself more and more strongly to the forefront of Marco’s mind.

There was no young woman behind the hedge. 

Marco returned to the party slightly quieter and more subdued, and turned his energy to charming a variety of important diplomats. He glimpsed the Rat at various points over the course of the evening, looking, as he had expected, ever-so-slightly dishevelled, and cutting a swathe of admirers through the crowd.

***

Marco couldn’t get it out of his mind. In the evening, when he and the Rat sometimes played a quiet game of chess or took a turn around the gardens, he would examine the Rat carefully to see if anything had changed, if he could discern some sort of difference in him now that he knew his secret. His conclusions were always unsatisfactory. Some nights he thought there was something different, something in the way the Rat looked at him, or didn’t look at him, that made Marco wonder if he might... if he might do something that he had no name for, only a vague unformed want in his gut. Some nights, there was nothing but pure innocence and friendship in the Rat’s face, and Marco was left feeling guilty and nervous and somehow dirty, sullying everything he touched. The uncertainty began to take a toll on him: he snapped, now, in answer to questions that he would only have treated with gentleness before, and he was more easily frustrated when checked at chess. Conversation between him and the Rat was stilted, awkward, and the decisions that they used to make so easily together were only arrived at after a struggle.

The Rat noticed, of course. 

“Marco,” he said in English one evening, as Marco frowned down at the chessboard. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Marco said immediately, eyes flickering over the Rat’s face and then away.

“Are you worried about the dinner with the Beltrazans? The incident last time won’t be repeated, all of the staff have been carefully instructed.”

“No,” Marco said awkwardly.

“The pine wood treaty? I assure you, the attestations are all in order, and I’ve been checking the -”

“That’s not a problem.”

“What is it, then? What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re not!” Marco’s eyes flew back to the Rat in instinctive protest. “It’s not…” He stumbled, because Marco Loristan didn’t lie, and the problem _was_ the Rat. Only not in the way the Rat clearly thought.

The Rat gave a small, bitter smile, just a twitch of his lips, and said, “Yes, obviously, it’s not.” His voice was cruelly mocking, but the cruelty was not aimed towards Marco. Marco flinched anyway.

“No, truly, Rat.” Marco cast around for something to say. “I cannot – I cannot tell you.”

“I’ve noticed.” The Rat rubbed his temples. “Marco, I… I cannot…” His face twisted. “I am clearly… failing at my duties. An aide-de-camp should be trusted, and I…”

Marco held up a hand, desperate for the Rat to stop talking. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words tumbling out. “I will tell you, just wait.”

The Rat halted, watching Marco’s face with his deep, serious eyes. “I will wait,” he said solemnly.

Marco sprung to his feet, took a turn or two around the room. He came to a stop before the Rat in his chair, lifted his chin and said, with the determined light of the Loristans in his eyes, “You must let me explain everything.” The Rat nodded mutely. “I became aware that you – you are…” He didn’t know the English word for it, cast around his various languages to come up with the only one where he had the vocabulary, heard long ago on the streets of Paris. “You are un inverti.”

Of course, the Rat didn’t know what he meant. Marco stood mutely, pleading with the Rat to understand, because he had no other word he could say. 

Comprehension darkened the Rat’s countenance. “You mean grieltska,” he said, a Samavian word that Marco had never heard before. “Queer. Schwul.”

“Yes,” Marco said, relieved at this evidence that he could still communicate and storing the words away for future use, and barrelled on before the Rat can say anything more. “I became aware, and it has troubled m-” He stopped, because the Rat was pulling himself to his feet, fingers white-knuckled on his crutches.

“You need say no more, Prince Ivor,” he said in Samavian. “I will make steps to remove mys-”

“No!” Marco cried, determinedly remaining in English. “No, Rat, you promised you would let me explain _everything_.”

The Rat hesitated, a second that stretched into an agonised eternity for Marco, before he said, “Go on. But I… please do not reprimand me further.” He looked down at Marco’s feet. “I could not bear it and I assure you that… that I know my mistakes.”

“Will you sit?” Marco held out a hand towards the Rat, but dropped it a moment later, useless, as the Rat shook his head. “I will be brief.” In the face of the Rat’s courage, to stand and wait for what he clearly expected to be an execution axe, Marco found his own. “I believe I want to kiss you.”

He had the satisfaction, at least, of shocking Jeremy Ratcliffe, which didn’t happen overmuch. His face paled, and his dark eyes widened, until they were pools in a sea of white. He stared at Marco, his mouth open, and said, “I believe I shall sit down now.”

Marco hurried to place a hand beneath his elbow. When this service was offered under normal circumstances, the Rat would allow it until he was settled, and then shrug it away in a way that he tried to make polite but could never quite manage. Now, he did nothing, even once he was sitting, and Marco allowed his hand to linger for the animal comfort of contact. It was not intended to be seductive. Marco had never tried to be seductive in his life. His hurried, “I must confess, I don’t quite know what to do,” was also not designed to be alluring, and Marco would have been flustered had he known what a pretty picture he made to the Rat, and the things that his words made the Rat think of.

“I do,” the Rat said, his prodigious mind working fast to shake off his shock. “I do, Marco, if you are truly sure. I have been practis- I know what to do.”

“I am,” Marco said. 

“Well, you must kneel down. It’s inconvenient, but I assure you it’s worth it.”

It was.


End file.
